The present invention relates to techniques for detecting heart pulses and reducing power consumption in sensors and oximeter systems, and more particularly, to techniques for distinguishing heart pulses in a sensor signal from noise and adjusting drive current provided to light emitting elements in response to a signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse in order to reduce power consumption.
Pulse oximetry is a technology that is typically used to measure various blood chemistry characteristics including, but not limited to, the blood-oxygen saturation of hemoglobin in arterial blood, the volume of individual blood pulsations supplying the tissue, and the rate of blood pulsations corresponding to each heartbeat of a patient.
Measurement of these characteristics has been accomplished by use of a non-invasive sensor. The sensor has a light source such as a light emitting diode (LED) that scatters light through a portion of the patient's tissue where blood perfuses the tissue. The sensor also has a photodetector that photoelectrically senses the absorption of light at various wavelengths in the tissue. The photodetector generates a pulse oximeter signal that indicates the amount of light absorbed by the blood. The amount of light absorbed is then used to calculate the amount of blood constituent being measured.
The light scattered through the tissue is selected to be of one or more wavelengths that are absorbed by the blood in an amount representative of the amount of the blood constituent present in the blood. The amount of transmitted light scattered through the tissue will vary in accordance with the changing amount of blood constituent in the tissue and the related light absorption.
For measuring blood oxygen level, oximeter sensors typically have a light source that is adapted to generate light of at least two different wavelengths, and with photodetectors sensitive to these wavelengths, in accordance with known techniques for measuring blood oxygen saturation. A typical pulse oximeter will alternately illuminate the patient with red and infrared light using two LEDs to obtain two different detector signals.
The pulse oximeter signal generated by the photodetector usually contains components of noise introduced by the electronics of the oximeter, by the patient, and by the environment. Noisy signals have a low signal-to-noise ratio. A pulse oximeter cannot accurately identify the blood oxygen saturation when the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse oximeter signal is too low.
To improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse oximeter signal, a pulse oximeter system will typically drive the LEDs with a large amount of current. A servo in the pulse oximeter will typically drive as much current as possible through the LEDs without causing the oximeter to be over-ranged (i.e., driven to full rail). The large drive current causes the LEDs to generate more light and to consume more power. Because the photodetector is able to sense more of the light from the LEDs, the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse oximeter signal is higher.
Increasing the drive current of the LEDs to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse oximeter signal causes the system to consume an undesirably large amount of power. The large amount of power consumption can be a problem for oximeter systems that are battery operated.
It would therefore be desirable to provide pulse oximeter systems that consume less power without negatively compromising the signal-to-noise ratio of the pulse oximeter signal.